


We'll Have To Muddle Through Somehow

by ThatRavenclawBitch



Series: 25 Days of Ficlets [7]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 25 Days of Ficlets, Angst, Belle is dead but not really, F/M, Holidays, Phantom Pain Prequel, holiday fic, if you read the main story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 10:57:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16931988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatRavenclawBitch/pseuds/ThatRavenclawBitch
Summary: Set in the Phantom Pain universe, this takes place the first Christmas after Belle's death. Gold and Lacey both visit Belle's grave on Christmas Eve.From my 25 Days of Ficlets prompts on tumblr. The prompt was “I won’t make it home for Christmas”.





	We'll Have To Muddle Through Somehow

Lacey heaved a sigh, her breath condensing in a frozen puff in front of her. She cupped her hands together, blowing on them for warmth, pulling her shoulders up to mask her naked ears from the icy wind. She should have grabbed her gloves and hat, but she’d been in a hurry. She wanted to get a visit in before the weather turned. It was Christmas Eve and that meant she needed to visit family, the only family she had.

The cemetery was a dismal sight today of all days and she wound her way through the headstones in a familiar path stopping when she reached the one she was looking for. It was clean, well kept despite the fact she hadn’t visited in weeks. There was a fresh bouquet of winter roses in a silver vase at the base.

_Belle Gold_

_Beloved wife, daughter, sister and friend._

Lacey snorted, as she always did, at the sentiment. Daughter shouldn’t be there. Belle had been beloved, but not by Moe French. The man had hardly registered when his daughter had died, too far in his cups to notice or care. As for friend, Lacey shook her head with a sigh. No one else seemed as effected by Belle’s passing as she did. No one but Gold.

A gust of wind blew through the cemetery, picking up the scant fallen leaves that hadn’t crumbled to nothing and blowing them across Belle’s plot. Lacey fixated her eyes on one of them, clinging to the side of the headstone, just as dead as Belle.

It was a shit day.

Not that every day wasn’t a shit day recently. The past six months had been one long string of shit days without a single break in the clouds. But today was worse.

One year ago she’d spent Christmas Eve with Gold and Belle in the big Victorian she’d come to think of as home. She’d certainly spent more time there than at her father’s bleak apartment. All he did was bark orders at her, demanding she bring him another beer as he seemed permanently fused to his recliner. By contrast, the Gold’s house was warm and inviting, a true home. Last Christmas Eve Belle had made beef bourguignon served with garlic mashed potatoes and finished the whole thing off with a genuine figgy pudding. They’d drunk mulled wine and watched White Christmas and Lacey had fallen asleep in the armchair next to the fire pretending she didn’t notice when her sister and brother-in-law’s canoodling turned to full on fondling before they excused themselves upstairs.

Home had been full to bursting with Christmas spirit, the smell of fresh gingerbread and the nine foot Balsam fir in the living room surrounded by brown paper packages with bows of red and green. Lacey couldn’t even remember what Belle had given her last Christmas, but she was certain she’d loved it. She loved everything about Belle and without her the holiday seemed meaningless. Home was Belle and without Belle she had no home.

The weather seemed to match Lacey’s mood. It was bitterly cold out, oppressive clouds hanging low in the sky threatening snow. But somehow the break hadn’t come yet, despite the failing daylight as day turned to evening. It didn’t feel right to not have snow on Christmas. But Lacey supposed that worked this year. It wouldn’t feel like Christmas no matter what the weather. It was just another day.

She squared her shoulders, looking down at the lump of granite in front of her bearing her sister's name. 

“Hey,” she said, kicking her foot against the frozen earth, the brown grass flattening beneath the toe of her boot with a satisfying crunch. “I, um, I know I haven’t been to see you in a while…”

She trailed off. She always felt stupid talking to a lump of stone like it was her sister. Her sister was gone and nothing would bring her back. Lacey just wished she was buried beneath the ground with her.

Their mother used to tell a story when they were young, about how after the girls were born they’d been taken to the NICU. They were so tiny and struggling to regulate their own body temperatures until the nurses had the idea to put them together in the same bed. They’d held each other tight, wrapping their tiny baby arms around each other until their vitals stabilized. It didn’t seem right for Belle to be alone now when they’d come into the world holding each other. Lacey would give anything to be able to hold her tight now, in death if nothing else.

“Hey,” she began again, clearing her throat and trying to find the words to say. “It’s Christmas.”

Lacey shrugged, a stupid giggle escaping her lips. “Like you care what day it is. But you always loved this time of year. Our whole lives you made Christmas magical. Even after mum died and dad stopped giving a damn, you kept it special. I don’t think I ever thanked you for that. I don’t know if I ever really even thought about it until now. I took so many things about you for granted because you were always just there. My big sister. And fuck, Bells, I really miss you.”

She stopped, heaving a breath. She was crying though she didn’t remember when the tears began to fall. They were cold, freezing to her cheeks, and she didn’t bother to brush them away.

“I won’t make it home for Christmas this year,” she forged on, shaking her head. “Because I don’t know what home is without you. But we’ll be together again one day. I have to believe that because if I don’t…”

She trailed off, suddenly aware that she was no longer alone in the cemetery. There was a crunch behind her, footsteps on the frosty ground, and Lacey shut her eyes. She knew who it was, who it always was.

She swiped her tears away with trembling hands, turning to face the only person in town who might be more grief stricken than herself.

Gold was standing there, a pot of poinsettias in the crook of his arm, his other hand clasping the gold cane he’d carried ever since the accident that had taken Belle from them.

“Lacey,” he said, striding forward to set the poinsettias next to Belle’s headstone. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No,” Lacey said with a shake of her head. “I’m done. I was just leaving.”

Gold pressed a kiss to his gloved hand before brushing it across Belle’s headstone, an intimate caress Lacey felt awkward witnessing. She turned away, staring off across the cemetery instead.

“She always loved this time of year,” Gold said, coming to stand beside Lacey.

“Yeah,” Lacey agreed.

“She had that poinsettia wreath she always hung on the door, remember?” he asked. “It seemed appropriate today.”

“Yeah,” Lacey said again, dumbly.

It was like this ever since Belle’s death. She and Gold had been close once. They’d been friends. He’d looked out for her as Belle’s sister, found her an apartment so she didn’t have to live with their father anymore, loaned her money any time she needed it. They’d gotten along too. They had similar dry senses of humor, they both loved to tease Belle, they had similar taste in alcohol. All that seemed to evaporate in the face of their shared pain. There was only loss left between them.

Lacey was all too aware that her presence did nothing but pain Gold. To see his wife’s face, her mirror image, before him had to be a pain like nothing else. Lacey knew. There was a reason she avoided mirrors lately. She and Belle were identical down to the last freckle.

In one fell swoop Lacey had lost both of her best friends. She didn’t have the foggiest idea how to get the one that still lived back.

“Well,” she said with a nod. “I’ll let you have your time with her.”

She started to shuffle away, her breath coming harder as the tears started to fall again when Gold’s voice stopped her.

“Lacey,” he called, and she froze, not daring to turn around. “What are you doing for Christmas?”

She turned, staring at him disbelievingly.

“Getting drunk,” she said flatly. “The quicker the better.”

“I had similar plans,” he said, inclining his head forward. “Care to join me?”

“I can’t,” she said, the words tumbling out before she’d even considered them. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I just…going to your house on Christmas of all days it’s too much. Too many memories.”

Gold let out a breath, walking closer to her. “I know,” he said. “I couldn’t decorate this year. It seemed wrong without her but that cold, empty house without any Christmas cheer seems wrong too. I just…I don’t know what to do.”

Lacey nodded. “I don’t know what to do either,” she said with a shrug.

One moment she was keeping it together and the next she was breaking, a ragged gasp escaping her chest, the sobs that had wanted to come all day breaking forth. She couldn’t breathe, her chest aching with the effort to draw breath, as inhuman keening noises were ripped from her throat. Lacey found herself pulled in to Gold’s embrace, the soft wool of his overcoat against her cheek as she buried her face against his neck. He smelled like wooden furniture polish and the jasmine scented candles Belle loved. He smelled like gingerbread and Balsam fir. He smelled like home.

She clung to him, her fingers digging into his back. His arm wrapped around her waist, the only thing keeping her upright. Moments our hours later she surfaced again, her throat soar and her eyes burning from the tears. She pulled back, looking up in to eyes that were just as red rimmed as hers must have been.

She coughed, taking a step back from Gold. She had no right to cling to him, to sob on his shoulder. He was hurting just as much as she was. He was alone just like her.

“I um,” he began dabbing at his face with his silk pocket square. “I have scotch in my shop. Would you like a drink? No point in us both being alone this year, right?”

Lacey bit her lip, looking up at his dark amber eyes, the failing light of the day catching gold highlights in his brown hair. She’d always thought he was handsome, but it was an academic sort of acknowledgement. He was Belle’s and she’d never thought of him as anything else.

“Yeah, okay,” she said with a nod.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So this was how the affair started, 6 months before the start of the main story. They got drunk, slept together, and it made them both feel alive for the first time in months so they kept doing it even though it was killing both of them. Merry Christmas!


End file.
